How to Land An Airplane Short 

The ease at which you explain such complex aviation concepts in laymans terms to the nonpilot community where they can understand and in a succint manner makes you worthy of being a great instructor.

Time to get the the white board out and discuss flying on the back side of the power curve...good stuff Trent!

Trent, your videos are always clear - audio is excellent and the topic is well demonstrated. I enjoy watching you all fly.

Really appreciate how you helped us non-pilots understand what you were talking about. Cool stuff.

Thanks Trent. Really enjoyed this video. I used to fly GA aircraft but these days confine myself to RC aircraft and my simulators. I need to get hold of an aircraft similar to yours to play with. You have so much fun in your type of flying.

Another great video Trent,keep up the great work and above all keep flying,tyre coatings are like re-tread tyres they rarely last.

Love your stall warning sound! Good job explaining ground effect and 'round out'/flare. Just realized your flaps are hard to see from inside cockpit and those puffy cumulus clouds are indication of thermals too 'as pilots know' . Thermals = warm air = turbulence . Gliding is often very turbulent flying! Would love to see you do a gliding video! Enjoyed the video as always

Thanks Trent , i do love being your wing man , great videos , all the best mate .........

Nice video Trent (poor Matt) I think your ability to talk through your process while you're in the process is fantastic. I like the technique, Man I look forward to learning it myself (in due time with proper instruction of course)

Great info! Awesome editing!

Great video Trent, thanks for calling out Back Country Aviation, Patrick and the gang there really know their stuff. We were lucky to have him on our San Juan Island adventure last year and it was pretty amazing watching him fly a Carbon Cub. Keep up the awesome work! The stuff you are doing is super inspiring.

Good stuff Trent. You have a GREAT playground and a plane that you can practice "almost" anywhere. Keep the vids coming! !! !!!

Great video Trent, thanks for sharing.

Simply my favorite RU-vid Channel. Excellent production quality, information, and entertainment. Beautiful scenery too. I'm a CFI and my opinion is that most consistently, pilots that make most accurate landings are the ones that can consistently fly stabilized approaches: airspeed (or AOA if equipped), configuration and procedures for the type of landing are spot on long before the wheels touch the ground. Great video.

Damn glad I found your channel, Trent. Rock on.

Appreciate this breakdown. Also glad you walked through whats different between conventional nosewheel flying and the work you're doing out in the backcountry.

Great video! Thanks. Helps a lot to understand the physics.

Watching your video once in awhile feels amazing relaxed !!!

Really well done video Trent!

Some great advice there, thanks Trent!...

I like the forward facing camera that shows more dash and pedals. Keep the vids coming!

Good stuff Trent. I am getting there.....

Excellent, a lot of really applicable tips in this video. Some extra action on the flaperon handle will improve my short landings - I'll get working on it... Thanks Trent!

I'm a fan of the 3-point as well. Also, when needed, I'll grab a hand-full of flaps as I rotate...retracting as I pop off the ground, accelerate and climb out of ground effect.

Really enjoyed this video...thank you

One more amazing video. Thanks for the clear explanations for those of us who don't fly.

Awesome video. Happy I stumbled across your channel. Spent the past two days really going through and watching a lot of them. I love the friendliness and the camaraderie. GA out in Nevada looks like a lot of fun. Here in Florida we don't really get that scenery. Keep up the work Trent, great videos!

Trent, I used that Herculiner on the bottom exterior of my Dodge Truck where the rocks would flip up and chip the paint. It lasted for close to 8 years that I owned the truck, and is probably still on there today. I realize that my use is not quite the same as on the business end of a tire but I am impressed with how durable Herculiner was when I used it. It has rubber chunks in it and the chunks may wear and come off with use. There are other very similar products that do not have the rubber chunks mixed in to consider also.

Superb educational video Trent 👍 Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge with us☺

very cool video man i love the drone follow shots man !!!! i bet it would be a really crazy feeling fpving while you fly, and fly around the plane with the race drone oh my lol i can only imagine the rush one would have !!!

This is the information I'm here for.

You are a good pilot , i learnt from day one in a tail dragger. It was my Dads Cessna 170b. The 170 has no rudder authority at slower speeds . And on take off it veers violently to the left when full power is applied . It can be difficult to handle , even for cub pilots , have lent the 170 to a bloke who owns a 185. He said lovely plane , but even he had directional control difficulties on take off. The knack to mastering the 170 is to apply full right rudder a split second before it starts to swing to the left , and if its got 4 pob , the 2 passengers in the back move the C/G rearward , so with full rudder , you may still need to tap the right brake to keep it on centre. If you are ever in New Zealand , put it out in advance , i live near to Ardmore Airfield , in Auckland. Ardmore was built by the US air force in ww2. After the war you gave it to us at no charge. I would be very happy to take you for a fly , there are a lot of strips all over NZ , North and South islands I would not have a problem , with you flying any Cessna at all. I have tail dragger rating of course , retractable rating, and c.s.u. Am covered for all single engine Cessna , love 182 and 170. And we also had a couple of 150s. You would go nuts if you did a 182 rating ,, i know they have the baby's wheel up front , but they have the 470 cubic inch 6 cly continental . Its a big engine , so the front mount and nose gear are solid thick and strong. With your skill , you could take a 182 with 2 pob and camping gear any place you have taken your kit fox I am a lot older than you , my father had a 170 , 2 150s , and a Cessna 310. The first plane was the 170 , i was 3 when he rebuilt that. He was an aircraft engineer and brought the 170 after it was written off. When he brought an aircraft , he would rent it out , so thats how he came to own 4 aircraft. Any way , for your age you speak as if you were a lot older , that is a compliment . your flying skill , attitude and actual ability is superb. Cheers Trent.

It was a little sporty that day. I saw you taxiing back in right before the downpour started. Great video as usual!

Good stuff man.

Hey, Trent, I used bed liner stuff on my 35s, works GOOD!

I appreciate your explanations for those of us who are interested but non flyers, they are very helpful... I'll research your videos but... One thing I've heard comments on is that landing a 'Tail Dragger' can be tricky and if you're not careful you can nose over the prop on the ground, not a good thing. IF you haven't covered that, I'd be interested in a video on that. Thanks...

I'm finding in the Parallel 42 Kit Fox ( Fox2 ) is a tendency to nose over on the prop if landing isn't handled correctly. The main thing helping me now is full back stick, regardless of flap position. With that I can brake hard without a nose-over. 1800 rpm seemed to help also, by providing more air over the elevator, but the full back stick was the main fix.

Good pointers! Thanks a lot!

Congrats 100K subscribers! Time for RU-vid to send you the 100K play button

I love how you explain things. You'll be a very good instructor. I wish I know something about aviation:-(. Having said that, I do have a lots of plaisir watching you. I d o so even at work when no busy. Keep up.

Ahhh, back in the air, thanks, good stuff...

Great info! I would like to know how you chose a landing area. I have wondered, how do you pick a landing field and how do you know what to look for and plan the landing in an unknown area.

Great video lots of good information for a none pilot like me enjoy following your adventures. How is your runway coming along.

Trent; I have around 3000 hours mainly bush planes on floats and on skies but enough wheels to understand them. My suggestion to you is the famous old side slip; be able to use either side and practice for hours until you are super comfortable in a full, controlled slip. You can straighten at the last moment; very slow and right on the line. Done it hundreds of times , some critical.in planes from a cub to a Bristol freighter to a goose.

Funny...at about 10min into the vid, I was thinking, "I'm going to ask a question about the tire coating and how it's holding up"...then 30 seconds later....lol. Guess my other one is, do you ever get concerned about windshear in those mountain areas/hillsides and flying very close to stall speed? Do you fly with your right hand on flaps on approach, and not throttle? Seems like having throttle control on the flap lever would be an interesting mod...lol.

Thanks for the tips. Currently I'm trying to get the money together to start Flight School. In the meantime I've been playing a lot of VR flight Sims. I actually became friends online with someone who's a flight instructor in real life. He's always been willing to give me some tips when I ask for them so I'm going to share this video and see what he has to say.👍

Awesome video Trent. Any plans to make a video on the Kitfox's structural integrity? What kind of metal it's made of, design, etc? I'd also like to know more about fixed-speed props. Do you use them? Keep up the killer content, I'm glued bromigo.

for maximum braking you should not land with brakes on. Reason is, the highest force tires can provide is when they're not skidding. When you touch down the tires are stationary and the ground is moving, so they'll skid even without brakes. By letting them spin up to ground speed and then applying brakes you'll get more grip and possibly stop faster.

Dude, Yes!!! Thank you!

0:10 Perfect paragliding skies :)

I appreciate you telling us the commonly terminology. Im sure im in the minority but ive never flown anything but I love watching your videos and the community around aviation particular with bushplane pilot's. Many hobbies are made unapproachable by the people who are in them. Its the complete opposite here and thats why I hope to one day fly a bush plane.

Hi Trent. Avesome video again, thank you! Have you noticed that it looks that your left wing root fabric is little loose?

Interesting situation with the tires. To me, it would be impossible to essentially paint on anything that expands & contracts and travels along the ground like a tire. Plenty of severe forces. Interesting question to check out with a tire retreading expert regarding options available to you and your buddies?

Talking and flying is super difficult! I constantly have to re-take instructional videos when I film them for a flight simulator I produce tutorials for, because upon viewing I'll realize I am just not speaking intelligently at all. hahaha

Alaska knows what to recap with.

Thanks Trent. Do you guys always try to land into the wind? I'm only asking because you mentioned never using less than full flaps for landings, which, for the heavier aircraft I'm used to flying, it is standard practice to use less than full flaps during gusty or "medium" crosswind conditions. Just curious.

Another nice video Trent. I happened to notice at about the 6 and 8 minute mark what looked like the fabric flapping near the trailing edge of the right wing. Can't imaging the fabric is really that loose, maybe it's just a reflection through the window?? Anyway, great video. Jim

Hey Trent, thinking in terms of laws of physics, I think landing with brakes applied may end up in a forward roll, depending on weight distribution of the different aircrafts? Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm a pilot in training.

Nice Video. I fly a Kitfox 7 with Rotax 914 and have a set of wing and tail vortex generators, but with full flaps I can't get the tail on the ground in the round out. Did you modify your Kitfox to be able to touch tail first?

I flew a Pilatus Porter for the US Army. Our short landing was called a PAPL, Powered Approach Precision Landing. I was not very good at it. Haha

Trent what type of stall horn do you have installed? Love your videos by the way!

Awesome discussion Trent! Can you do a video about the "public land" situation you guys have out west, be it BLM or whatever. As a pilot on the east coast, "back country" doesn't exist here like it does over there. It'd be great to hear the relationship aviators have with the managers of those public lands. Fly safe!

So, next time you see a day with those puffy cumulus clouds, fly down to Minden and go up in a glider.. Looks like it would have been a great day for cross country soaring!

My son and I are both pilots and are going to be doing some fly-in camping. Last night we were watching your video of your return trip from Oshkosh and loved the part where you landed on the bluff in South Dakota near the Mo. River. Wondering though: How did you know that it was public land you were landing on? Can one land a plane on any land that's public? (Assuming it's safe terrain)

Trent, love your videos you should meet with Jones marcinkou u do the same type of flying there would be lot kitfox talk would be great video for your veavers. Tnx Mr mike.

For air sickness real sour hard candy when u take off tricks ur mind

BTW, best into clip on RU-vid!

“Lift” from ground effect is the compression of air “trapped” between the wing and the ground. Similar to an air puck. That’s why low wing aircraft have more float on landing than high wing.

What's easier to short land and takeoff: a plane with taildragger or tripod landing gear?

I require no barf bag 🤮 💼 to film 🎥 Awesome 👏🏻 Trent

Okay, this video raises a few questions for me. Note that I've almost always flown high wing airplanes, and tail-draggers much less often ... though not sure whether that matters. Anyway, my experience has been that takeoff requires more runway than landing, and usually significantly more runway. Which means... for me at least... what matters is the "short takeoff" part of the process. I mean, you don't want to land somewhere, then realize you don't have enough flat surface to take off from the location you just landed! Hahaha. To me, this situation is very strange in a way. Why? Well, because a very short landing definitely requires a lot more effort and skill than takeoff. Yet the short takeoff is what makes or breaks any specific landing location, not the short landing. Essentially, a short takeoff involves applying full power and just waiting until the airplane is going fast enough to get off the ground without stalling immediately thereafter... but not much else. Maybe you want to apply some flaps at just the optimal speed to pop off the runway a bit shorter than otherwise, but... not much else. For me, the short landing goes like the following. While I'm still a ways from the runway, I reduce power to idle, then pull the nose back a bit to reduce speed to a point slightly above stall speed. In the airplanes I was used to flying, this would create a not very loud stall warning sound. In this situation, the decent is quite steep, but the speed is quite slow. Generally I set up this situation so that this steep decent would make me land just a tad longer than my goal (which is for the tires touch down at the very first foot they can, which is usually a painted line on paved runways). When I realize my trajectory will have me touch down a bit short, I tweak on a little power just for a second or three to push me a bit further, but keep the nose high to prevent speed from increasing. When I realize my trajectory is perfect, I just hold the trajectory as is and let the perfect short landing happen. When I realize my trajectory will have me touch down somewhat long, I "crab" for a while until my trajectory seems about right. When I say "crab", that means to push on the rudder pedals to yaw the nose to the right, while pushing the stick to the left to tip the left wing down. The former wants to make the airplane fly a bit further to the right while the later wants to make the airplane fly a bit further to the left. Together the result is... the airplane continues to fly down the axis of the runway. But the yaw causes the wind to smash against the side of the airplane which causes drag, which requires a steeper decent to keep the airspeed high enough to not risk a stall. I practiced this a million times, which is how you get good at something, and also makes you understand how to tweak for loading, crosswinds and other variables that arise during flying and landing. However, this really isn't the answer to landing in tight locations as I love doing so much. The answer is takeoff, which at least in the airplanes I would fly, took more surface than my very short landings. One thing I noticed while watching a takeoff by someone else near the start of a later video (one where Trent talks about how he got into flying in the first place) is a potential problem that I never had. It showed his friend taking off along a ridge-line of sorts. To my view, he got to a speed where I thought I would have pulled up the nose and launched myself into the sky... but he couldn't because obviously his tail-wheel would have impacted the ground. I'm not sure what would happen if he had done that, but my general feeling (with zero tail-wheel experience) was... that would be unwise. Hitting the tail-wheel on the ground could instantly change the attitude of the airplane and perhaps not in a good way. Anyway, this observation was a bit disturbing, because the implication was... the tri-cycle configuration that I always flew does not have this problem to worry about. You can pull up the nose at any time without any worry of smacking the tail-wheel against the ground. Perhaps some airplanes have a tail close enough to the ground that one might smack the tail against the ground in such a situation, but not on any airplane I ever flew. To be sure, that would be even worse than smacking a tail-wheel against the ground. Nonetheless, it was odd to see something that seems to give the tri-cycle gear an advantage for short take-offs! How do other pilots answer these questions? Does everyone find take-offs require more surface than landings? Does my tail-wheel impact worry have any merit?

hey palmer my two best planes are your's and drako !! what you thank about that ????

Is that your stall speed indicator we hear every time on TO

Dude I graduated flight school today!

Have you thought of inside cutting a thick inner tube the right size and popping it over the tire and then a little tire vulcanizing... even X2 for thickness ??? Just a crazy idea I would do lol

Hey Trent, great flying and thanks fro sharing your short field landing technique!! Is it me or do you have a bike grip on your stick? It's a really great idea and I might use that same hack for my stick as I always struggle to find a grip which suits me!! Thanks for the great video and content you always post out here!! :)

Hey Trent I feel like it would be a cool video if you showed how you make these videos. Because notice you have a DJI osmo camera in the back of the plane and camera on the wing and sometimes a awesome drone shot. Just an idea. Love the videos

I have a kitfox 4 with 100 hp rotax uls engine. My problem trying to land short is I have a spring gear instead of a factory gear. If you bounce then you float. My plane is clean and wants to fly fast. A lot of safe practice with pilot technigh to land short. If I land in 400 ft, thats short for me, at least for now. Also big tires increase torque, which makes braking less effective.

Love your videos...they are inspiring me to finish my training. You mention flicking forward on the elevator after dumping flaps for a short landing...this seems counter-intuitive to me. Between that and being on the brakes, I would think you risk ending up nose down and burying the prop. Can you elaborate?

you need to become a CFI!!!

Hi Trent, Im running Herculiner, found anything better yet?

Looks like that might be Dead Cow...? When did you guys fly? Been seeing thunderstorms on the Wx for up there this last week. Unfortunately I had to work, almost done for the day and heading out to practice in an hour.

I agree with your landing techniques but it's the approach that determines the point of touchdown. Granted you're subject to varying wind direction, gusts etc. which will always affect the touchdown point. To mitigate this you use a short field approach, which technically means you're carrying more power and are flying "behind the power curve" , at a steeper pitch angle and a steeper approach angle, aka flying dirty, aka adding parasite drag which allows you to clear obstacles such as trees much easier.... The advantage of doing this for landing is twofold, one is during your approach, coordinated pitch and throttle control will quickly allow correction if you're landing spot is moving short or long of the desired point of landing......secondly, when you flare you close off the throttle and you're almost instantly dropping several knots below the stall speed and touching down almost immediately where you can leave the flaps alone as they are still creating additional drag. For additional authority in controlling your landing point you can concurrently use a "slip" by cross controlling your aileron and rudder (commonly used before the advent of flaps), this really increases the parasite drag and you can virtually drop like a rock while staying at your short field approach speed. Again this can be quickly applied and removed in varying degrees to maintain your landing point while still maintaining your desired course. The other great benefit in doing this will almost assure your ability to land safely on short final with an engine failure as pitching over to your normal approach speed & angle will significantly extend your glide rate....and ….as you aptly said, practice these techniques by using a comfortable altitude as your imaginary runway....and man, I do love your video's for the shear fun of flying you evoke, keep up the great work.

Only a matter of time until you upgrade to rotary wing aviation. A whole new world of flying is going to open up to you when you make that leap.

Poor Matt. Nothing worse than puking due to turbulence. Looks like you got him back for farting in your plane on the Bonham Springs run haha 😅

Why dont propeller planes have reverse thrust? I guess wouldnt be difficult to obtain through propeller blade pitch 180 degrees.

My biggest worry when I fly, is just uncoordinated turns, while going base-final.. just cause slow down in speed, always makes me worry I'm gonna putt it in a spin. How do you handle that problem in such a slow-light flying aircraft?

Stupid question, what are using for audio capture? Camera audio or other?

What is you plan called if I wanted to buy one how do I look it up

ah, nothing like the feeling you get when you realize there's no puke bag....

dude what song were you using around 1:30? It's tasty!

With brakes on during the land short maneuver , how easy is it to plant the prop in the dirt with too much brake?

Thanks for all the tips. I absolutely suck at landing, this will definitely help. Practice required😔

did you say you rotate at 29kt? Holy crap I cant imagine getting off the ground at that low speed. I'm used to rotating at IAS 60 kt in my 172P

Clean and score your wheels with pure alcohol and sandpaper then coat them in an elastimer two part epoxy. (The rubbery stuff)

Let Matt fly: I've never been air sick when I'm PIC. Only once or twice as passenger. And good to point out Backcountry Aviation. Cooper is looking at Bush flying and i know he likes that channel.

I just enrolled in flight school left college and to go than after my ppl I plan on learning commercial

A 50 to 60 mile walk back to Reno when you're air sick....seems like an option to me. Lol!

Superb video. Thanks for this basic Stol tutorial. You should an instructor as you communicate extremely well. Did you build your Kitfox plane or buy it? What is the base cost for the Kitfox to build one?

When you say "Miles per hour" do you really mean statute miles/hour or knots?? Is it just colloquial, (as in a mile in the air is a nautical one), or are LSA aircraft ASI's in statute miles???